Last night, I went shopping and got sidetracked by some adorable pajamas in the store. I couldn’t NOT get the boys some matching jammies. And maybe some chocolate truffles that are only there at Christmastime. Oh and some egg rolls. I didn’t even shop hungry! Anyway. We put them in their new duds for bedtime and my heart melted a little with the cuteness of it all.

Simon guy has not been sleeping well again. I think those molars are attempting yet again to pop through. This morning, he woke up at 5:45. I needed to get up for work anyway, so I went in and held him for a while. He fell back to sleep in my arms and I just stood there breathing in the beauty of that moment. I decided to make it a no-shower-ponytail day so that I could enjoy that peace a little longer. Once he woke back up, Eze got up too and the three of us started getting ready so Dave could keep sleeping. At one point, I sat down on the floor with Simon in my lap. Suddenly Eze clambered onto my other leg and both boys were there on my lap. Not fighting. Holy cats, those boys certainly know how to fill me up 🙂

I feel overwhelmed with gratitude as I reflect on how much I am thankful for this Thanksgiving. I get to hug and snuggle all of my boys on this beautiful Thanksgiving day. I have a perma-grin going here, I’m thrilled that we were able to bring Simon home when we did. My biggest source of thankfulness is always for my sons’ birth families. I am so thankful to them for making the choices they did, so we were able to create our amazing little family. And always on my mind these days is Simon’s foster family who love him deeply and took such great care of him for 2 years of his life. The fact that they can communicate with us through this blog fills my heart with happiness. They loved seeing Simon’s English words progressing, and we are trying to help him retain as much of his Korean words as we can. It’s such an important part of his life, and is such a comfort to him when we speak to him in what little Korean we know. When he is naming off the people in our family, he often includes “Ha-mae” in the people that he counts as family. Simon’s foster mom will always be a part of our family, and we thank God for her every day.

I’m thankful that Ezekiel’s heart was so ready and accepting of his baby brother. We prayed hard while we waited for Simon that our boys would love each other, and bond quickly. That prayer was answered with a great big yes. Ezekiel is such an amazing big brother. I see much of my brother Nate in Ezekiel. He is a leader, and protective of his brother (even if he is Simon’s biggest source of grief some days!). Sure there have been plenty of times that he has struggled with this huge change in his life, but he remains my sparkly, joy-filled boy. His teacher tells us he’s the life of the party at school, and I think that’s the perfect way to describe him at home, too.

And of course, there is my Dave. My favorite man. He has proven himself as a stellar stay-at-home-dad in these past few weeks, and every day that I get to go to work and do work that I truly love, I’m grateful for Dave. I got home from work last night and told him, “I got to learn how to create navigators and workspaces and widgets today in the new program. It was so fun!” He grinned at me, told me I’m his favorite little nerd. I can’t think of anyone better to teach our boys how to treat ladies (and everyone else) right, to throw a football, to plant beautiful flowers, to play the guitar, to love life.

There are many things to be thankful for in our lives – incredible family, authentic and uplifting friends, good health, as much food as we need to get us through each day (and then some), a warm house for these upcoming winter months, a job to help us pay for the things we need and want, sleep (thank you, Simon for sleeping through the night for the past 2 nights!), hot tea with honey and milk, dance parties in our living room, being able to love God and talk freely with our boys about HIs love for us and what faith is all about, little hands that pat me on the back when I’m getting a Simon hug, hearing Ezekiel tell me, “This is causing a ruckus!”.

When Ezekiel was a toddler, I did a great job recording his words on the blog. I loved his toddler language and called it Ezekielese. As the second child, inevitably there are things that Simon won’t have recorded. (Yikes, what if we have more kids after this?! They’ll have a birth certificate and school pictures to record their lives, I guess. Just kidding… Kind of.). Here’s my effort to track some of what the little mister says to us:

Ettie: Eze (It is hilarious when he puts his tiny pointer finger up and scolds, “Ettie, NO!” Most of the time it’s funny).

Memmay: Mommy (or “I want that”, or “Daddy”, or Hey, what about me?” Memmay seems to be more than just Mommy).

Appa: Daddy (he is also starting to use “Daddy” more since that’s what Ezekiel calls Dave).

Gutty: Gus. The best dog in the whole world. Poor guy now has two boys jumping and tugging on him. And Simon loves trying to get him to drop whatever he’s chewing on so he can throw it for him. Simon also yells, “Guttie, NO!” a lot, I wonder where he hears that?!

Kahkah: Snack, most often cracker. This is also the Korean pronunciation for snack.

Oo-Yoo: Drink. The Korean word for milk is oo-yoo.

Gookoo: Television. Or turning lights on.

Teetee: Socks or shoes

Teetee go: Put shoes on and go outside. (If any of us say “Tee tee go”, Simon jumps up and down in excitement. He LOVES to go outside).

Cah: Car. This boys LOVES cars.

Nigh nigh: Sleepy time!

Bootee: His favorite book, “Goodnight Moon”.

Up up up: Up the stairs, or pick me up.

All done, More, Please, Thank you: He knows the sign language for each of these, and also says them now too. Well for thank you, it’s more like “Ah you” and he does the sign for it at the same time.

He can name many of his body parts now, too. I keep forgetting to work on that one with him. Poor baby still has a cold, so he’s learning nose very quickly, since we’re constantly wiping his tiny runny nose.

This morning, I took out two pieces of bread and the jar of peanut butter and the jar of jelly to start making Ezekiel’s lunch for school. I got distracted by something, and went to go help the boys get ready for their mornings. I came back to the kitchen and Dave had packed up Ezekiel’s lunch. Great! Fast forward to the end of the day, and Ezekiel got home from school announcing, “I’m SO hungry, Daddy There was no jelly in my sandwich”. Dave looked into Ezekiel’s lunch box and exclaimed, “Ezekiel! You didn’t eat any of your sandwich!! Why?” He pulled it out of the sandwich container and that’s when he realized it was only two pieces of bread. No peanut butter nor jelly in his peanut butter and jelly sandwich. The “sandwich” he thought I’d “made” felt light when he packed it up this morning.

On a successful note, we had Ezekiel’s parent-teacher conference tonight. His Kindergarten teacher tells us he’s the life of the party and she loves having him in her class. He is learning quickly what is expected of him throughout his school days. She told us this story that had me laughing pretty hard (mostly because we hear all the time how much he loves Mrs W):

Mrs W: Maybe I’ll have to use some tough love!
Eze: What’s tough love?
Mrs W: Well…
Eze: Does tough love mean you’re going to marry me?
Mrs W: Um, no.
Eze: Does it mean you’re going to kiss me?
Mrs W: No. It’s like when you sit at my teacher chair and start digging in my drawers and then I tell you that you have to go sit in your spot.
Eze: Oh. I don’t like tough love.

Poor Mr Simon has come down with more runny nose/fever junk. Poor baby. He was very sleepy today, and at one point, Dave peeked in on him and he was laying down with his head on the floor playing with his blocks. He fell asleep for an early nap very quickly after that. He hasn’t wanted to eat much, either. So pretty much we just hold him and snuggle him as much as we can in hopes that we can love his icky feelings away.

Today I was writing with a friend who is expecting her second child a few weeks from now. She’s very nervous about adding another baby to the mix, and asked me how much harder it was to have two kids now. I told her that while, yes, it’s harder to have two kids instead of one, it’s so much more wonderful than I had imagined it to be. Sure there are the days that they freak out and need both of us at the same time. But to watch my two sons play together, and to watch Simon look up to Ezekiel the same way I look up to my big brother, it makes my heart swell even bigger than I could have imagined. And better than an Ezekiel belly laugh, is Ezekiel + Simon belly laughing trying to crack each other up.

Yesterday, Simon felt better as the day went on. By evening, he was back to himself. This morning, he woke up still fever-free, which made us all happy. Dave has been working on the weekends to finish up the last of his landscaping projects, so he headed off to work and I chilled with the boys. I knew it would be a long day if we didn’t get out of the house, so I called my mom up to see if she’d help me get some shopping done with the boys in the morning. We had a successful morning of getting to each place we needed to go, and I tried feeding the boys lunch in the car while my mom drove home. That felt like a workout all by itself! Mom and Dad, how did you drive-through places with all 4 of us kids? I don’t remember it happening often, so maybe that’s how.

My mom got to see Simon in full-on two-year old form on the way home. “No! No! NO NO NO NO!!!!” was his answer to all of my questions. All while shoving his fingers into his mouth. Poor guy. Teething is so hard – especially those darn molars. I gave him some pain medicine, and he fell asleep pretty quickly once we got home. Magically, Ezekiel slept during Simon’s nap time too, and they both woke up happy and ready to go play at the park. They played really hard and ate a good supper for me. Dave got home after the boys finished their meal, and we enjoyed a really fun evening as a family. If this was a glimpse into what our lives are going to be like with these two boys, then we are in for a treat. Together, they are hilarious and sweet. I love these boys so much.

I just happened to catch a surprise visitor to our house this evening…

Poor baby Simon came down with a fever of 102.5 tonight. I think it’s a mix of teeth (mean old molars!), and the remains of the cold Eze shared with all of us. He didn’t want to eat much tonight, and went down with barely a complaint for bed tonight. I know something’s off when I don’t even get kicked when it’s time to put on pajamas!

Earlier this evening, Simon was sitting on Dave’s lap saying all of our names “Appa” (Daddy), “Memmay” (Mommy), “Ettie” (Eze), “Gutty” (Gus). I’ve never been able to get him to say the names of his foster family in Korea, but decided to try it again tonight while he was on a roll of saying our names. Sure enough, we turned to a picture of his foster mother and he squealed, “Hal-mae-nah!!!” We were overjoyed to hear him say her name, and he just grinned each time we said her name back to him. Then he started giving her pictures kisses. It was so adorable. We got it on video, and here it is below…

Edited to add: Simon’s fever went up to 104.0. These are the nights that I wish I could just ring Simon’s foster mama up on the phone and ask her the best way to comfort and calm Simon when he feels so uncomfortable.

Last night, right before bed, I uploaded a video from my phone onto You.Tube (modern technology blows me away). Tonight I remembered to go check it out so that I could add it to the blog. I took this video just a couple of days after we came home with Simon. Today marks one month exactly that we’ve been home with him. I watched this video and marveled at how many words he now knows in English, and how much Korean babble he is still using (I love that. How I wish I knew Korean so we could teach him both). I am also amazed at how much more hair the little man has grown lately! He also has a top molar just about ready to pop through.

To Sion: We feel so blessed that you and your family are able to watch Simon Seul-gi grow and thrive with us. We are so thankful to you, your family, and your grandmother. Simon has been so loved by all of you, it has made his transition to being loved by us better. If there is any way we could get videos from you and your family for Simon to watch, I know he would be so excited to see and hear you all again. If not, we understand, and are very thankful for the photos we do have. We put them in a picture album that he really enjoys looking at.

Two nights ago, we were very blessed to get a comment on the blog from Simon’s foster mom’s grandson (did you follow the relationships there?!)!! Knowing that they are reading the blog, and watching for videos and pictures has me motivated to blog much more often!

Tonight, we voted and brought the boys along with us. We hope our presidential pick wins, and that our vote on the amendments wins, as well. I guess we’ll see in the morning!!

Last night, after listening to Simon thrash around and whimper in his sleep for the hundredth time, Dave and I whined to each other about how tired we are. This morning, Eze overheard us debating solutions and said, “I keep telling you! I want Simon to sleep in my room. I’m a good sleeper!!” (That kid could sleep through a herd of wild elephants running through his room). The only problem was there is no space for both a bed and a crib in Eze’s room.

Dave worked today, so I took the boys out to my parents’ house (Simon was in full-on two-year old mode today). My mom remembered that they have a pack n’ play out there and recommended laying Simon in it for nap time. He slept fairly well, so they said we could have it for the time being. Solution! The pack n’ play fits great in the corner of Eze’s room!!

So tonight we are trying our first night of our new arrangement. I start the evening in Eze’s bed until Simon is nearly asleep; Eze starts the night in our bed. Then once Simon is out, I bring Eze back in to sleep in his own bed and enjoy a (fingers crossed) more peaceful night of sleep with my Dave. Prayers will be very much appreciated (I’m writing specifically to you on this one, Taylor Malone!!).

Follow Our Blog via E-mail

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.